Ticket Information

Event Details

3 hat trio, Thursday, October 19th, 8pm, Doors at 7pm.
BIOGRAPHY
3hattrio (three hat trio) plays American Desert Music. Their aim is to create a new music which responds to the natural world of their sacred homeland near Zion National Park in southern Utah. They also strive to acknowledge the cultural traditions of generations of people who have worked and lived on the deserts of the American southwest. The subject matter of the songs is often desert oriented, sometimes not. Mostly, they express the desert experientially from a daily-ness of watching light off distant mesas and hearing the way sound plays off sheer sandstone cliffs. Then they play music. They don’t over-think it. The music is spacious, atmospheric, mirage-like, spiced with old-time cowboy, classical, jazz, and Caribbean overtones.
Hal Cannon sings, plays banjo and guitar and writes many of the 3hattrio songs. He's been a practicing musician most of his life but also takes pride in his life as a folklorist, radio producer and scholar of cowboy lore. Greg Istock plays acoustic bass and foot percussion. He has a Caribbean music background and is an active visual artist. Eli Wrankle is a classically trained violinist and a student at Southern Utah University. He comes from a family of artists and joined the group when he was fifteen. Now twenty, he is the old soul of the group.
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3hattrio made their European debut at Celtic Connections in 2017 to outstanding reviews. This Glasgow Scotland festival is the largest winter music festival in the world. They have been featured at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, the Moab Folk Festival and with original music and dance for Repertory Dance Theater. Mostly they play at home for their dogs and the occasional lizard, spider or Red Tailed Hawk.
COMMENTS FROM SPONSORS AND PERFORMING ARTISTS
The latest performance was at Celtic Connections in Glasgow Scotland in February, 2017. Here is what noted music critic Paul Kerr had to say about the concert. "There's a serene Zen like wisdom imparted from the band to those in the audience prepared to empty their preconceptions." Read the whole review HERE
“3hattrio played to a full house in Logan, Utah last September. The audience was spellbound! The trio truly captures the essence of the desert--its landscape and people and our stories transformed into unique sound and style. Nora Zambreno, Bridger Folk Music Society
“3hattrio—speaking of “hats"— blew "the lid" off the joint in Jan. 2016 at the 32nd annual National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada, where we’ve impatiently waited for years for a fresh sound deep-rooted in cowboy-n-Indian country. Their “Desert Music” not only reflects a magical landscape of the American West, but it becomes it, both physically and spiritually in the same lyrical and melodic breath/riff/groove/notes, which this trio renders in creative celebration of fellow-being cactus, cottonwood, lizard, snake, coyote, rabbit, bird, cumulonimbus, sun, wind, rain, snow, and that otherworldly desert air bonding together the entire mystical ecosystem. This is music that would have reverently spoken to bygone western-hat-donners from Gene Autry to Georgia O’Keeffe to Edward Abbey. This is music that, now, in the crucial throes of these climate-change times, must speak to all cowboys-at-heart riding the Milky Way’s open ranges. You bet!—all of us forked to this glorious orb of a paint horse, named Planet Earth.” Paul Zarzyski, poet
They have a sound that is not only unique and alive but every audience ends up giving them a standing ovation, at least the shows I have seen…. Moab Folk Festival 2015, George Thompson
“A profundo Gregorian sagebrush chant.” Baxter Black, cowboy poet
“What really grabs me is the energy of the creative moment – It’s just really alive.” Martha Scanlan, singer-songwriter
“I like the sound - very evocative of the desert canyon lands - the vocals are spooky which fits (Glad there is no Indian flute) Keep pushing the envelope.” Ian Tyson- cowboy singer/songwriter
“The music you are creating now is a combination of the timeless and the transient. We are the transient ones in a timeless landscape. I'd say this trio has a good long future ahead of it.”
Jim Rooney – Americana producer
“Dark Desert Night” reveals a musical insight of vistas that are anything but deserted – with a light of understanding into the mysteries of our vast American landscape. It is a portrait of who we are, as settlers, and the legacy of who they were, before our guns, germs and steel," Van Dyke Parks- composer
"3hattrio's music is a fresh, original sound tied to a love for the desert land…and I'm a desert rat. These guys are sonic pioneers." Tom Russell – singer/songwriter
RECENT REVIEWS
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“The music is constructed with performance precision, a natural presence of melody, not forcing the music but allowing it to seep into your ears the way a good medicine seeps into your body and does some good work and as for the music -- you won't realize its benefits until you patiently give it a few listens.”
No Depression, John Apice, 3/16
“Their sound is a veritable bouillabaisse of roots influences from the darkest Appalachia to Western film soundtracks.” Penguin Eggs Magazine 2016
“Utah's 3hattrio depicts their music as "magical realism," a generally literary term describing works that blur the lines between the real and surreal. It's not so much Harry Potter or a world of wizardry; it's more about subtle, unexplainable enchantments that weave seamlessly into everyday life.” The Bluegrass Situation Song of the Week, Allison Hussey, 2016
“Utah’s 3hattrio are as close to the desert blues of Tinariwen as they are to the hillbilly crooning of Hank Williams.”
Maverick Magazine, Paul Kerr, 12/16
“Rare music, beautifully played and dripping with emotion. This is one of the most impressive albums I’ve heard this year, so simply played and yet so deep and complex.”
Blues Matters, Andy Snipper, 2016
“An album of the year contender for me and, I suspect, most who hear this extraordinary album! “Solitaire” is a genuinely remarkable recording and one that continues to repay repeated listening sessions thanks to its haunting power and great depth.” American Roots UK, Mike Morrison, 10/16